jb wrote:Best I can tell wasting money on those that hate you changing nothing = investing in your own nation.

Or some kind of globalist point of view where America is just equal or econd?

Do I have that right, Ron?

Seriously, I am non-partisan on this. It was all a waste and a fraud.

Ron as in Paul? I'll take that ;)

And I agree, both the Iraq War and the stimulus were both waste and fraud. I don't understand why bw, errr, FMB, feels the need to defend the Iraq War by saying the stimulus was more expensive. Maybe he'll come back with some limey smack or explain how Mexicans immigrant are Europeans to clarify his point.

Fire Marshall Bill wrote:In any event, how's that Hope and Change thingy workin out? Where's the jobs outside of laying oil gulping asphalt and bailing out bankers?Heard any good news for the small businessman like me & wabo.............?

Just saw a story on the news last night about Bucyrus. There was a major road/sewer project in downtown Bucyrus as part of America's Recovery Act. Well, the roads have been closed so long downtown that several of the small businesses closed down due to decline in sales from lack of access. That is a nice double edge sword of recovery.

Weak effort there J...not that I'd ever expect anymore from a failure like yourself

Anymore you on NHB = SD on Football. He hijacks every topic into a QB bullshit dcussion, and you do as an anti-Obama rant. And I give poor effort? Sheeeit.

I ramain non-partisan on Iraq & Afganistan. They are all Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb to me at this point, except for possibly the potential that Chaney's economic self-interest would still have us there full-go.

I don't give a rat's ass if the POTUS were Barry Goldwater or George McGovern. You can not nation build those fucks. Period. / They are stuck in the 12th century. Even if there were any rational agenda to overthrowing Sadam, which I could easily argue was dumb as he was about the only non-sectarian balance in the region and this is a struggle against radical Islam thinly veiling wealth, then why didn't we get in, kick ass, and get out in 2003 if that was so GD important?

And I also don't care if the POTUS were Ronnie Raygun or FDR, at some point you have to freking piut AMERICA frst. I have no idea how any of this and using my brain mkes me a flaming left-winger in your opinion, but hey, keep clicking on Fox.

For a fairly in-depth look at what the stimulus is now doing since the immediate crisis-based funding is over, click here.

Imagine if we'd invested all the warted money on nation buildng these corrupt idoiots who can't wait to see us leave so they can resume their ignorant bullshit in this sort of new technology and business where we could be.

I'm with JB on this, it has little to nothing at all do to with D's & R's. We're just not making good decisions when it comes to money and minding our own freakin business anymore. We pick the wrong battles to fight, then go about fighting them the wrong way.

Criminals in this town used to believe in things...honor, respect."I heard your dog is sick, so bought you this shovel"

FUDU wrote:I'm with JB on this, it has little to nothing at all do to with D's & R's. We're just not making good decisions when it comes to money and minding our own freakin business anymore. We pick the wrong battles to fight, then go about fighting them the wrong way.

I will defend the removal of Saddam and the so-called nation-building in Iraq all day long. The invasion was necessary as the least bad option available to us. The nation-building, or at least our best, good faith effort at it, was our moral obligation to the Iraqi people after we removed their murderous dictator from power with the sanction of virtually the entire free world.

However flawed it may be, what exists today in Iraq is a self-governing entity that is at least nominally democratic and free. Anyone who thinks that US interests aren't served by having a self-governing democracy in the heart of the Middle East, instead of a terror-supporting, Al-Qaeda-sponsoring, Palestinian bomber-compensating, chemical weapon-developing dictator in place needs to remember what was going on before 2000.

Memories are so short. Regime change was the official policy of the Clinton administration. The idea that Saddam had to go was uncontroversial in 1998, when Clinton was dropping bombs on Iraq in retaliation for his ignoring UN resolutions on WMD.

17 UN resolutions, an overwhelming bi-partisan majority in Congress, and a large majority of Americans said removing him was the least bad option. The revisionist history that Bush acted "unilaterally" is a joke. It was a 35-nation coalition that went in there, and the American people and the Congress were both solidly behind the move.

The only major countries opposing military action to effect regime change were the French and the Russians. In both cases, it was later proven that their diplomats, politicians and bureaucrats were in the pay of Saddam to the tune of tens millions of dollars, effectively buying their UN Security Council vetoes.

The UN, the body supposedly the only institution capable of providing "legitimacy" to any act of aggression against...well, anyone...was shown to be totally compromised and in bed with the dictator himself. The massive Oil for Food program set up to feed Iraqi citizens and prevent them from being gassed by their own "leader", had been corrupted by Saddam, who was stealing oil revenues from the people the program was set up to protect and feed to buy votes in the UN from his French and Russian business partners and arms suppliers. UN officials were complicit in the corruption and fraud.

This corrupt cesspool is the same UN that Bush was supposed to go to for the 18th resolution to grant him legitimacy to do what everyone knew needed to be done.

The status quo in 2000-2003 was unsustainable....we were spending billions even then on flyovers and bombing raids. The "multilateralist" UN, the option preferred by the anti-invasion side, had proven to be irredeemably corrupt. The US and UK intelligence people knew of the O-F-F corruption by 2001.

To once again refresh memories, I will excerpt here part of the "Iraq Liberation Act", passed in 1998, a full two years before GWB was around to do any "misleading" on WMD intelligence, The vote in the Senate was unanimous. The vote in the House was 360-38:

Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 - Declares that it should be the policy of the United States to seek to remove the Saddam Hussein regime from power in Iraq and to replace it with a democratic government.

Authorizes the President, after notifying specified congressional committees, to provide to the Iraqi democratic opposition organizations: (1) grant assistance for radio and television broadcasting to Iraq; (2) Department of Defense (DOD) defense articles and services and military education and training (IMET); and (3) humanitarian assistance, with emphasis on addressing the needs of individuals who have fled from areas under the control of the Hussein regime. Prohibits assistance to any group or organization that is engaged in military cooperation with the Hussein regime. Authorizes appropriations.

Directs the President to designate: (1) one or more Iraqi democratic opposition organizations that meet specified criteria as eligible to receive assistance under this Act; and (2) additional such organizations which satisfy the President's criteria.

Urges the President to call upon the United Nations to establish an international criminal tribunal for the purpose of indicting, prosecuting, and imprisoning Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi officials who are responsible for crimes against humanity, genocide, and other criminal violations of international law.

Expresses the sense of the Congress that once the Saddam Hussein regime is removed from power in Iraq, the United States should support Iraq's transition to democracy by providing humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people and democracy transition assistance to Iraqi parties and movements with democratic goals, including convening Iraq's foreign creditors to develop a multilateral response to the foreign debt incurred by the Hussein regime.

I can show you New York Times editorials from the late 90's counseling military action to remove Saddam. As for nation building....the post-invasion occupation was bungled and mismanaged horribly until 2007...no excuse making for the mistakes and misjudgments of Bush and Rumsfeld there. But that doesn't change the rationale for regime change. We couldn't very well go in and remove Saddam, and then leave the Iraqi people to the Baathists thugs and the Islamists. There is no instruction manual for this sort of enterprise.

I am not a big fan of so-called nation-building, but mostly because of the costs...in lives and treasure, not because it's in any way wrong to assist a country's citizens in establishing self-government. Bush's tireless promotion of self-government around the world is one of his most positive legacies. We will never have anything to apologize for if we promote democracy where there is now tyranny of whatever stripe. Turns out it has worked out fairly well in Japan, South Korea and Germany, if we look back at out track record with helping to rebuild those we defeat in just wars.

The point (I think) being made by FMB is that the benefits accruing to the US from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are arguably greater than the benefits the country has received from the more expensive "stimulus" package.

Of course, it's debatable. That's what we're here for.

The removal of Saddam was a necessary and a noble enterprise, whether or not the nascent democracy in Iraq survives their attempts to screw it up.

Bring it on.

"I believe it is the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting." H.L. Mencken

Notice that I said it was a necessary and a noble enterprise regardless of the long term political outcome in Iraq....NOT that it would all be "worth it" regardless of that outcome.

All the more important then, that we not lose what we have sacrificed so much to gain by concerning ourselves only with keeping the campaign promise of man who opposed the strategy that succeeded there.

"I believe it is the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting." H.L. Mencken

Saddam was full of bluster. Actions? Not so much. he was a petty ganster and containment worked just fine.

It is up to a people to build a nation for themselves. Be nice if we minded our own business, took care of Americans first, and got about that. /

And I am not short sighted, I see it further. We've been hamfisted in the mid east since Eisenhaower. Creating and backing losers, including Saddam an dthe muhajadeen now Taliban when it served us, spenindg billions agianst them when it doesn't.

You can cite all he global America second/blame America UN mumbo jumbo you want, and add in all the horrific legislation crafted n paranoia and lies, but he was a child on the international stage and we fell hook line and sinker. Saddam was lukewarm or negative toward Wahabbism and we wasted that capital, serving our own interests up on a platter for the crazy fundamentalists to exploit; not to mention thae natural counterbalance to Iran, which is now the hegimon of the region at the very time we are tapped out and busted.

Turns out it has worked out fairly well in Japan, South Korea and Germany, if we look back at out track record with helping to rebuild those we defeat in just wars.

I'd say it worked out well in Japan and Germany, and as modern nations free from the influences of the 12th century and radical fundamentalism, understandable. They also weren't passive aggressive and had a very different culture of reconciliation. German Lutheran pastor weren't screming that America is the devil 24/7. S Korea is more complex, and to their credit they evolved as a nation after our instllation of a long-term military junta (we liked to do that).

I would also note that Vietnam is doing fairly well and will continue to do better.

Last edited by jb on Tue Aug 31, 2010 1:17 pm, edited 2 times in total.

The point (I think) being made by FMB is that the benefits accruing to the US from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are arguably greater than the benefits the country has received from the more expensive "stimulus" package.

Go for it, both of you.

Modern family is in re-runs for many more weeks and I can use a good laugh. Except that the stimulus package didn't kill or wound thousands.

wiz1001 wrote:Notice that I said it was a necessary and a noble enterprise .

If by that you happen to mean trumped up and misguidedly naive and helped cripple the economy, then yeah.

I notice you don't rebut a single point I made in my long post re: the unsustainable status quo pre-invasion...the utter lack of legitmacy of a corrupt UN to sanction or not sanction any military move...the lack of controversy about the need to remove Saddam pre-2000...our moral obligation to help build a democracy after removing Saddam's boot from the neck of the Iraqi people, etc. What we get instead is argument by assertion and detached amusement (your specialty, JB, you'll have to admit)

As for hurting the economy...the $100 billion or so a year we spent annually in Iraq and Afganistan is walkin' around money for the Department of Agriculture under Obama. (Edit: spare me the 'gotcha' on this...I exaggerate for effect)

And as for Saddam being a relatively harmless and contained nuisance, you're just plain wrong. We know for a fact that Saddam was either operating, or allowing to operate at least three al Qaeda training camps in Iraq from (at least) 1999-2002. He was harboring if not actively aiding a large number of the world's most dangerous and well-known terrorists. You might also consult the families of the thousands of his own citizens in the Kurdish regions that he massacred with poison gas on just how benign and harmless he was. Pretty rich to hear you calling anyone else naive.

And as for "trumped up", well, the four separate blue ribbon...or Congressional...or British...or bipartisan investigations (take your pick) conducted regarding pre-war intelligence all came to the opposite conclusion. Have you read Kay/ISG or Butler or Duelfer or Silberman-Robb or any of it? Or would that cause too much cognitive dissonance with your "Bush lied" mantra?